Chapter Two: Fences

Twenty feet. There was twenty feet from her house to his. The exact distance was nineteen feet and ten inches. Sakura had found that out when she was seven and the Uchihas had put up a new, much nicer looking, fence to surround their property.

She remembered running with Sasuke and Naruto back and forth from her backyard to Sasuke's while the fences were down. They chased each other around with no care in the world, no rules or structures, just feeling free.

But that was back in the period of time that Sakura called Before. That was back when all three of them were friends. That was before they all turned twelve and were separated by arbitrary things like what gender they were and what secondary school they were going to be attending.

"I'm going out," Sakura called out, grabbing her utility jacket from the coat rack in the front hall.

No one responded because no one was there to do so. Sakura rarely saw her parents on weekends unless she was working a shift at the family bakery and café. She would have loved to have been working today and earn tips but her parents thought she worked too much. Sakura was the only kid she knew whose parents scolded her for being too high of an overachiever and would have preferred if she went out and enjoyed her youth while she could.

But Sakura didn't have that luxury. She needed perfect grades and she needed to be part of the National Honor Society. She needed to work volunteer hours and she needed, desperately, to be the best of the best. They don't give scholarships out to just anyone and her parents weren't going to be able to put her through medical school with money from the café.

Sakura Haruno was one stressed out seventeen year old girl. It was a good thing she had found a form of stress release that worked well for her.

Stress release that came in the form of her childhood friend next door.

Right in the center of the row of houses lining the cul-de-sac stood the magnificent two-story plus basement and attic cottage styled house of the Uchiha. The most recently built house in the neighborhood, only nineteen years old, it was more of a manor, especially in comparison to the smaller houses surrounding it. It was the jewel of Forest Grove Court. When Sakura was younger she thought the Uchiha house came straight out of a fairytale. The neighbor boy, Sasuke, thought that was the stupidest thing he had ever heard.

Walking by the house caused the hair on Sakura's neck to rise and a shiver to run down her spine. Sometimes there would be a heat that would pool in her lower belly. She was being watched and she knew if she looked up she would fine Sasuke sitting on the roof, looking out into the street.

Stress release she called him. Stress release, she tried to convince herself, was all he was.

Leaving Forest Grove Court and walking along Forest Grove Drive, just a few houses down from where the two streets met, stood the simple two story and three bedroom home of the Uzumakis. Sakura had probably spent more time in the Uzumaki residence when she was in her younger years of primary school than her own home. Kushina Uzumaki was a friend of Mikoto Uchiha and she babysat Sasuke and Sakura after school.

"Oh, hello Sakura!" Kushina greeted her warmly, letting her into her house. "I didn't know you were coming over. Let me go get Naruto."

"Ah, no! Ms. Kushina, I'm here for Karin," Sakura reminded her. Kushina frowned but quickly placed a smile on her face.

"Right." Kushina grinned broadly, leading Sakura to her kitchen. Even if Sakura hadn't spent most of her time in the Uzumaki house most of her youth she would be able to navigate it easily. The floor plan was almost an exact copy of the Haruno home.

Sakura slid onto a barstool at the kitchen's island and waited for Kushina to call her niece down from her room. From her spot she could see the markings on the doorway where Kushina used to measure her son and his friends' heights when they were younger. Naruto was always the shortest back then. He always swore he would someday be taller than Sasuke. They both seemed to stop growing and it seemed he would always be an inch shy of reaching Sasuke's height. He also use to say he would marry Sakura one day.

That was never going to happen, Sakura chuckled inwardly. She was forever glad that Naruto had given up on that around the end of primary school. She thought of him as a little brother, nothing more.

"Stop being such a creep, you perv!"

Not that that stopped him from seeing her as something else. Sakura turned around and saw Naruto in a headlock. He kept slapping at Karin's arm attempting to get her to release him. Karin let go and Naruto collapsed on the floor.

"Why are you always a bitch to me?"

"Why do you always have to check out my friends like some skeeze?" Karin unwrapped her cardigan from around her waist and pulled it on, covering the scars and bite marks on her arms. She never exposed them outside of her home and Sakura's house.

"I-I was not!" Naruto's cheeks heated to a red almost as vivid as his mother and cousin's hair.

"Sure you weren't." Karin rolled her eyes and hooked her arm with Sakura's. "Let's go Sakura. You're not safe here."

"Bye Naruto!" Sakura giggled and waved at him. Naruto waved back and then turned back up the stairs, cursing. "You're so mean to him, Karin."

"That's our dynamic. If I start being nice to him it would be weird," Karin scoffed. "Plus he needs to learn to stop staring at you like that. Maybe if I embarrass him enough he'll quit it. Let's go pick up Yamanaka. She has been texting me nonstop this morning about making sure that you actually left the house today. I was almost tempted to tell her that you needed bedrest today."

"Karin!"

Karin was the friend that Sakura never knew she needed until she met her the year before. She was bold like Ino but unlike Ino she didn't baby her. It made it easier for Sakura to tell her secrets that she couldn't tell Ino who would have gone into mother hen mode and demand that she put a stop to her relationship with Sasuke.

"Don't act so prudish now. Let me see the marks," Karin teased her, pulling at the belt loop of Sakura's denim shorts. Sighing, Sakura shimmied her shorts and stockings down enough for Karin to take a peek at her hips. Karin let out a low whistle when she saw the finger shaped bruises. "Is it always like that?"

"No. Usually he tries not to be rough enough to leave me all marked up but we did hold back from seeing each other for a week."

"I wish this wasn't a secret. I would love to fuck with him about this."

"Hey. You don't blab about me and Sasuke and I don't say anything about Suigetsu."

Karin grumbled incoherently and slid into the driver's seat of the old Toyota Camry her uncle had purchased for her when she moved in with them. Karin didn't like hand outs so she had insisted on an old used car that she could afford to payback the cost of.

"I still don't understand what's going on with you and Suigetsu."

"Well I still don't get what's going on with you and Uchiha," Karin retorted defensively.

Sakura took a sideways glance at Karin as they backed out of the driveway. Karin's face held an impassive expression. Karin was always putting her walls up. Sakura knew it would take time for Karin to be completely open with her but she had hoped they had become close enough for her to be privy to more about Karin's life.

Karin had transferred at the beginning of junior year with a few other students from Oto. Not many knew what had exactly happened but there was a rumor that the headmaster had been involved in some sort of scandal which was why some students were either forced to transfer or did so on their own free will. Karin had never explained why she had transferred but she was one of the only former Oto students that had been friends with Sasuke Uchiha which led her to be welcomed by Sasuke's friends. Karin didn't really warm up to the others but she had become close with Sakura after an incident in the locker room involving Karin's scars.

Sakura never questioned her about them and Karin appreciated that.

Being friends with Sakura meant being friends with Ino as well and luckily for Sakura, Karin and Ino got along fine. Karin wasn't ready to open up to Ino as much as she had with Sakura but she was happy with having another female companion. Sakura and Ino were her first female friends.

"I think he wants a real relationship. Like holding hands in public and going to the movies and sharing popcorn. That kind of stuff," Karin breathed out as they turned out of the forested neighborhood and onto one of the major roads of Konoha. Ino lived in the center of town where all the shops were located in a loft style flat above her family's flower shop. The Yamankas had lived in one of the quiet neighborhoods but had moved around the time Ino was in middle school because Ino's mother preferred the more "urban" feel of the center of town.

"And what do you want?" Sakura asked. She couldn't help but feel a little jealous of Karin. It was unlikely that Sasuke would ever want to do anything like that.

Sakura was frustrated with her relationship with Sasuke but she wouldn't give it up. Sasuke wouldn't say it, but she could feel it in the way he touched her and the way that he looked at her that he felt the same as her. The problem wasn't if he loved her or not. The problem was if he wanted to love her. And right now, it seemed that Sasuke wished he didn't.

"I want better for Sui," Karin answered softly. She stared blankly ahead, eyes cloudy behind her black frames. The rest of the ride remained quiet until they pulled up to the building reading Yamanaka Flowers.

"Hey!" Ino called out from a window from the apartment above the shop. "I'll be down in a sec."

"Does it feel like we're always waiting on her even though she's always rushing us?" Karin grunted. Sakura just sighed and shrugged her shoulders.

Sometimes it felt like Sasuke had some sort of magnetic pull on her. Like how a compass will always point north, there was something in Sakura that always pointed her in the direction of Sasuke.

She hadn't been looking for him but there he was, in the same bookstore as her. He couldn't see her because she was shorter than the bookshelves but she could see the top of his spiky black hair above the top shelf. Ino and Karin were at the store's coffeeshop so she took advantage of being alone and turned the corner into the next aisle and quietly approached him. She stood right next to him and reached out for a copy of the book in his hand.

Sasuke saw her small hand as she grabbed the book and took a sideways glance at her. He then subtly looked around them for anyone they knew.

"Is it any good?" Sakura asked, skimming the summary on the inside of the jacket cover. She looked up at Sasuke and saw that he was still reading his book, ignoring her. "Um…"

Sasuke sighed and placed the book back on the shelf and then walked away without a second glance back at her. With a new ache in her chest, Sakura placed the book back on it's shelf and headed back to her friends at the coffeeshop.

"Guess who I just saw?" Ino asked her biting down on the straw of her ice coffee. "Sasuke Uchiha. He just ignored me when I tried to say 'hi'. I can't believe you use to be friends with him."

"Neither can I," Sakura murmured, stealing a sip of Karin's frappe.

When Sakura got home later that evening the house was still empty. It was always empty before eleven at night. Luckily for her she had been invited to dinner at the Yamanakas because it was unlikely that she would have bothered to prepare anything to eat when she got home.

It felt like Sakura was always being taken care of by the Yamanakas. Ino was the first one to take care of her by becoming her first friend in school when she was seven and then Ino's parents followed by taking care of her after school until Sakura reached seventh grade. Sometimes, on days like today, it still felt like they were taking care of her.

Sakura wondered how different her life would have been if Ino Yamanaka never followed her into the woods at the edge of the school field that day during recess. Maybe she would be alone, all empty inside like her house. Because Ino wasn't just her first friend in school but possibly her first real friend in general. Ino was the first person to pick her instead of being forced to be with her.

Sakura pulled out her Organic Chemistry textbook and took a seat at her windowsill. It was one of her favorite design structures of her home that her window jutted out and created a bench type area that she could sit at. She refused to believe it could possibly be her favorite window in her room because it faced the Uchiha house.

Sakura had always liked reading and learning. Reading helped her escape when she was younger, helped her not feel as lonely. Learning new things made her feel closer to the world by uncovering more of it's secrets.

Her phone vibrated in her pocket and she pulled it out. She had lots of people in her address book but only four people actually texted her. Sakura sighed, disappointed that it wasn't her parents messaging to check on her. It was almost as if they forgot she wasn't at work today.

Are you coming over tonight?

Sakura looked out her window and across to the Uchiha house. She always wondered what kind of sick joke it was that it was her window of all the windows that faced the Uchiha house.

Sasuke was sitting on his roof, watching her, which explained the shiver down Sakura's spine. He was sitting with one knee propped up, his elbow resting on it as his hand cradled his face. He was looking at her with his impassive expression, as if it didn't matter if she went over or not.

Sakura stood up and drew her curtains closed. Sasuke could handle being ignored tonight. She ignored the lonely ache in her chest.

Author's Notes: I hope this chapter felt different than the last one because it's Sakura's POV.

I know it doesn't answer questions, maybe asks more, but it's the beginning, just an intro.

Someone asked what a CPAP machine was: it's a machine that helps you breathe is the easiest way to put it. Usually used at home for patients with sleep apnea it's also used for people with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease or COPD and other illnesses involving respiratory failure. So just think of it as something that's helping Itachi breathe at night because of a history with respiratory failure.

Chapter title has to do with fences between houses and fences between people.

Next chapter should be up by Friday...